When potential buyers come to look at your house, they’re not only LOOKING, but they’re also SNIFFING, either consciously or unconsciously. When we live in a house, we tend to get used to the way it smells and don’t always notice when something is a little…stinky. But any obnoxious odors will be immediately apparent to a first-time visitor. So before you show your house, take a sniff or two, and then take these steps to de-odorize.

1. Pets. Dirty litter boxes and old “accident” stains are the obvious culprits here. Keep Kitty’s litter box scrupulously clean at all times, and consider having your carpet professionally cleaned by someone who is experienced with pet stains. Don’t forget that many people are allergic to cats, so make sure your furniture and carpet are vacuumed frequently. If possible, think about keeping your cat or other pets confined to a certain area of the house while your house is listed. If you’re thinking of getting a cat or other pet, wait until AFTER you’ve moved.

2. Cooking. We’ve all been told that we should eat more fish, but until your house sells, eat that fish at a restaurant. Strong odors from cooking fish hang around and permeate the house. Cabbage, onions and garlic are notorious offenders, too. Throwing a few lemon slices in some boiling water or running lemon peel through the garbage disposal can help clear the air. And remember to take out your kitchen garbage as often as possible.

3. Cigarettes. Smoking easily drops the value of a house by 30% or more. Smoke gets into the drywall, carpets, furniture, and drapes, and it is very difficult to remove. If you or a family member smokes, stop smoking inside the house as soon as you decide to sell. Paint the interior, and either shampoo the rugs or replace them. If weather permits, keep the windows open to help air out the house.

Follow the above steps, and your home will not only LOOK good, it will SMELL good. A fresh-smelling, odor-free house is much more appealing than a stinky one, and much more likely to sell at the price you want.

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The flexibility afforded by a “zero-commute” combined with the skyrocketing price of gasoline has strengthened the case for full time teleworking and telecommuting. According to an Environmental Protection Agency (2004) study:

“Americans spend an average of 46 hours per year stuck in traffic. Gridlock produces more than $63 billion in congestion costs per year”

The artist community has been well acquainted with the use of work/living spaces for years, but improvements in technology have made the benefits of teleworking and occasional telecommuting more attractive to general consumers. According to the key findings form the International Telework Association & Council (ITAC) Telework America (2000) study:

“Home-based teleworkers also have larger homes, on average, than non-teleworkers; the difference amounting to about 500 square feet. The most popular place for an office in these larger homes is a spare bedroom, with the living room a distant second. The primary home telework activity is computer work (55% of total activities), followed by telephoning, reading, and—averaging 7% of the time—face to face meetings.”

As you purchase your next home, there are certain factors to consider if you need to set up a new home office:

Make sure that your high-tech needs can be met. Have a qualified electrician inspect the wiring of the house to see if the system can handle the extra power load that your home office requires. Older homes may need significant upgrades to handle the extra power, while newer homes are built with more energy-efficient systems to handle the additional power along with heating/air conditioning requirements. If you use cable, DSL or satellite internet access, check with your local service provider to see if access is available in your new neighborhood. Shop around for your telephone provider—in some cases, business service bundles may be more cost effective than regular residential service.

Designate where your office space will be. Determine the amount of space you will need to accommodate your work style and space. In many cases a spare bedroom or living room space can be used, if a formal den option is not available. If your work requires heavy telephone usage or just heads-down concentration, you may want to consider utilizing a room with a door. Doors can be closed to reduce interruptions from other family and household noises.

Plan your office blueprint to include all required furniture, bookcases, computers, fax, and printers. Make sure to allow for filing and storage space for files and extra office supplies. Lighting is critical for computer or assembly work, so make sure to allow for direct sunlight along with any specific task lighting that may be necessary. Select flooring options that will allow you to work comfortably—you may wish to go with hardwood or laminate flooring to allow for your chair to move smoothly across the floor. Install enough phone lines to cover your home, business and fax machines needs.

Is the office easily accessible? If you will expect regular package deliveries, make sure that your designated office is easily accessible to the front door of the home. This is also necessary if you will need to meet clients or visitors in your office and would like to ensure a professional appearance for your business.

Find out about local business requirements. Some cities have zoning restrictions and guidelines for work/living spaces along with tax implications. Make sure to check with your local government to determine if special restrictions exist.

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Picking a good web hosting company is essential to keeping your website open and your costs down. There are many to pick from, as well as different cost plans to look over. Depending on the amount of sites that you intend on building, you may want to consider a larger web space in the long run.

You should start with the smallest web space that you can get to test the waters, just incase niche website Internet marketing does not work out for you. You may want to add on later, so make sure that your provider offers that option.

You will want to decide a provider that has a reliable service. If your site is down or takes to long to open up when visitors are trying to get in, it may lead them to click out of your site and move on to the following one. They will also more than likely not visit in the future since they will remember their bad experience. For this reason, it is probably best to stick with a well known company who you can check reliable references on. There are many small hosting providers that offer space for as low as $.50 to $1 per month, however, you never know what you will be getting and many of them want you to pay for at least a years worth in advance.

You will also want one that has the most affordable hosting. If you can create your own small site or have one made for you, then you will probably be able to find space for as low as $3 to $4 per month. However, if you need to pick a company that offers a What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) website builder, then you will probably end up paying $10 to $15 per month for the smallest amount of space. But if this is the only way that you can build a site, then it is necessary.

Some web hosting providers may also offer a deal on a yearly URL or other products when you make a web hosting buy.

Ultimately, whatever web hosting provider you pick will depend on your individual needs and what you can afford. Hopefully you will be able to snap up a well known provider at a low price who will allow you to upgrade your service as needed.

That’s an obvious question – we all do! So what is the trick? So much time and money is spent on systems updates, roofs, and structural issues, that many times there’s nothing left for what really makes the sale: what your potential buyers see. And more importantly, what they fall in love with.

People don’t walk into your house, and say, “Wow, they have all new electric. Let’s buy.” That’s just a core expectation. The trick to selling houses fast is to seduce your customers to fall in love when they walk through. It has to feel like a home to them.

The two most inexpensive yet surefire ways we have found to create this atmosphere is through color and through decorating.

A tastefully decorated house really stands out from the others. New house builders learned this a long time ago. Why do you suppose they hire interior decorators? But they have the advantage of creating one masterpiece to sell many. Rehabbers don’t have that luxury. But we discovered that a house can be “staged” to feel like a lived in home. Staging is the art of artistically placing décor items around the house. Perhaps a colorful place setting on the kitchen counter along with open coffee beans for aroma, and an open recipe book turned to a colorful picture. Bathrooms dressed up with beautiful towels, sweet smelling soaps, and window treatments as shower curtains. Finally, fireplace mantels decorated as if the family was already living there.

But even staging doesn’t create the ambiance you need. It is the warmth that comes from color. You may have heard to use a white-on-white color scheme to remain neutral and not turn anyone off. The truth is – no one is turned ON either. Buyers aren’t attracted to all white houses. At best, there’s no emotion. With the use of contemporary designer colors, however, these same people fall in love with the home. That’s the emotion that sells. When they love, they buy. And they fall in love with houses that are brought to life with full color.

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Google Adsense for Search is different than Adsense for Content but it is just as essential to your earning power with the Google Adsense program.

Just like Adsense for Content places targeted ads on your content pages, Adsense for Search places targeted ads on the results page of the search set in motion on your page.

You can use the standard Google search box on your site and the user can then search the web or even your site. When you feel more comfortable, you can change the look of the Google search box, essentially customizing it by changing the colors and using your logo.

The best thing about Google Adsense for Search is that you can track what your visitors are searching for. That is, if the search has two or more hits. Unique queries will not be tracked. But you can see the top 25 searches performed from your website by clicking on the Advance Report from the Reports tab and specifying a date range.